Sunday, July 1, 2018

Get Out of My Way!

I hope you’re up for a sandwich
this morning. As in a Mark sandwich. His gospel is a veritable sandwich shop. He
will begin with story A and then, before he finishes it, he inserts story B,
and then he goes back to story A.

Today’s Mark sandwich
could be called the Women in Crisis Sandwich. We don’t know their names, but
they’ve both become outsiders. And Jesus is not only dealing with healing them
of their illnesses, but he’s also erasing the lines that separate them from
others.

The religious laws of
the time said that neither a menstruating woman nor a dead person should be
touched. If you touched them, then you’d become impure and you’d have to go
through a lengthy, involved ritual to be made pure again.

Now, as the leader of
the synagogue, Jairus knows all about those purity laws because he’s the one
who must enforce them. He is a person of prestige in his community.
Well-respected. The one other people listened to. And so, the public display he
makes of himself here is really quite shocking. He falls at Jesus’ feet and
begs Jesus to help his daughter. And, just like that, Jesus is on his way to Jairus’
house, with a large crowd of people tagging along.

Then, right there on
the road, Jesus’ mission is interrupted. This is no doubt upsetting to Jairus,
who was in a hurry to get Jesus to his daughter before it was too late to save
her.

There’s a woman in
the crowd. A woman who’s been bleeding for 12 years, which, we learn later, is
the age of Jairus’ daughter. The entire time this little girl has been alive,
the woman in the crowd has been on her period. Perhaps only a woman could
appreciate what that might have been like, but a good word to describe the
woman would be tired. The worst part
of this for the woman isn’t physical, though. It’s relational. Her sickness has
completely removed her from contact with other people.

Not only did the
purity laws say that you can’t touch a woman who is menstruating, but you also
couldn’t even touch anything that SHE touched, or you’d be unclean. So, for
twelve years, the woman has lived in social isolation. Like Jairus, she’s
desperate. And, like Jairus, in her desperation she’s prepared to take a big
risk.

She’s heard about
Jesus’ power and thinks that maybe if she can just get close enough to him, she
could be healed. She figures out a way to do it so that no one even has to
know. It could be a stealth healing. If she blends in with the crowd and just gets
close enough to touch the edge of his cloak, she might go undetected.

It doesn’t work. Jesus
stops in his tracks and asks, “Who touched my clothes?” This is an absurd
question. With the crowd pressing in on him, everybody’s touching his clothes.
But one person in the crowd knows she’s been discovered.

Now, remember Jairus?
He’s got to be out of his mind about now. He is taking Jesus to save his dying
daughter. They don’t have a moment to spare. And here Jesus stops to have a
conversation with this random woman. To Jairus it must seem like Jesus has
chosen to help some worthless woman instead of his precious little daughter.

Imagine the dilemma that
Jesus faces in this story. Either he hurries to the daughter of a rich man, or he
stops to heal an outcast woman. He either helps an important person, or he
helps a nobody.

Well, what may seem
like a dilemma to you or me is no dilemma for Jesus. He doesn’t choose, he does
both.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t
go out seeking the bleeding woman. He’s on the move, and she’s in his way.

And that’s where
ministry opportunities so often find us. We don’t have to go out looking for
them. If we open our eyes, they’re right there in our path… Often what we
consider an interruption or an obstacle. You may wish they’d just go away,
because you’re headed someplace and they are in your way!

It’s a lot like the
story of the Good Samaritan where the good religious folk find a man in their
path who needs their help. They can’t be bothered, so they walk on by on the
other side of the road and pretend not to see the poor man who’s been beaten
and left for dead. But the Samaritan sees the man in need and stops to help.

Are there such people
we in our path? Perhaps they’re people who find us, or, maybe they’re people God
places in our path.

Who is God placing in
our path here at Ascension? When we’re longing to follow Jesus and the needs of
the world around us seem overwhelming, it’s a good question to ask. Who are the
people God is placing in our path?

Can we see them? Are
there barriers that keep us from responding to them? Discomfort? Fear?

Lately, we seem to be
overly concerned about who’s on our side and who isn’t. Who is worthy of our
care and who isn’t. Who we’ll serve in a restaurant and who we can refuse to
serve. Who we will bake a cake for and who gets no cake. Who we will respect as
a human being and who we will not.

That’s never the way Jesus
encounters people. They’re more to him than the laws that keep them in their
place. They’re more to him than the labels assigned to them by society. They are
God’s beloved. As unlovable as they sometimes are to everyone else, they are
always God’s beloved.

As Jesus people,
we’re all about living the Jesus Way in the world. This is what it looks like…

What are the lines we
draw that make it so difficult for us to see other people as God’s beloved?
Pure/impure. Old/young. Rich/poor. Christian/Muslim. Brown/black/white.
Republican/Democrat. Gay/Straight. Legal/illegal. Us/them.

Instead of erasing those
lines, we’re drawing more of them every day. Those who take a knee for the
National Anthem/those who stand for the National Anthem. Those who refer to Donald
Trump as the current occupant of the White House/those who refer him as our
president. Those who believe everything they hear on MSNBC/those they believe
everything they hear on FOX News.

We have doubled-down
on our boundaries and shut out those we’ve separated ourselves from. We don’t
listen to opinions that differ from our own anymore. We shut them out and only
listen to the others who occupy our own tiny boxes.

Friends, this is not
the Jesus Way. Our life together, as a community of faith, embodies the Jesus
Way. When we enter this place to worship, none of those lines we draw between
ourselves and other people matter.

At no time is this
more evident than in the meal we share. Do you realize what a radical concept
this is in our world today? If Sarah Huckabee Sanders came to our communion
table today, of course we would serve her. If a transgender person came to our
communion table today, of course we would serve them. Come to the table here and we
will serve you, no matter who you are.

Thomas Merton has said it so well:
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are
worthy.”

In our little love
laboratory that we call Ascension Lutheran Church, we practice the Jesus Way of
love so that we can live the Jesus Way of love in the world. That’s how we
usher in the Kingdom of God, by living the Jesus Way in a world that’s about as
far from the Kingdom of God as it could be. We can begin by
really seeing the people we encounter, not as obstacles in our way, but as God’s
beloved.

2 comments:

Your homily on today’s gospel blew me away! Just an excellent historical explanation of the people involved and of the radical love Jesus proclaimed. Your commentary on how it applies to our lives and today’s world was spot on. Thank you for opening my eyes, clarifying issues for me, and preaching His love.

About Me

Nancy is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She serves at Ascension Lutheran Church in Towson, Maryland. Nancy grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, and then served time at Bowling Green State University, before moving on to Trinity Seminary in Columbus. Starting out in North Dakota, she then returned to Ohio and served churches there before landing in North Carolina, where she served at two different congregations in Charlotte. She was also on the bishop's staff and earned a PhD from Pitt during her spare time in the area of religion and education. She considers herself an educator who happens to be a pastor and it makes a difference in how she does ministry. She is a divorce survivor, and the mother of two artsy-fartsy children who abandoned her when they became adults. Now she shares a home with Father Guido Sarducci, her tuxedo cat.